10 Beautiful Lines ...

SOMEONE HAS WRITTEN THESE 10 BEAUTIFUL LINES. READ and TRY  to UNDERSTAND the DEEPER MEANING of THEM.

1. PRAYER is not a "spare wheel" that YOU PULL OUT when IN trouble, but it is a "STEERING WHEEL" that DIRECT the RIGHT PATH THROUGHOUT LIFE. 
2. Why is a CAR'S WINDSHIELD so LARGE & the REAR VIEW MIRROR so small? BECAUSE our PAST is NOT as IMPORTANT as OUR FUTURE. So, LOOK AHEAD and MOVE ON. 
3. FRIENDSHIP is like a BOOK. It takes a FEW SECONDS to BURN, but it TAKES YEARS to WRITE.
4. All THINGS in LIFE are TEMPORARY. If they are GOING WELL, ENJOY them, they WILL NOT LAST FOREVER. If they are going wrong, don't WORRY, THEY CAN'T LAST LONG EITHER. 
5. Old FRIENDS are GOLD! NEW friends are DIAMONDS! If you GET a DIAMOND, DON'T FORGET the GOLD! To HOLD a DIAMOND, you ALWAYS NEED a BASE of GOLD! 
6. Often when WE LOSE HOPE and THINK this is the END, GOD SMILES from ABOVE and SAYS, "RELAX, SWEETHEART; it's JUST a BEND, NOT THE END!" 
7. When GOD SOLVES your PROBLEMS, you HAVE FAITH in HIS ABILITIES; when GOD DOESN'T SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS, HE has FAITH in YOUR ABILITIES. 
8. A BLIND PERSON asked GOD: "CAN THERE be ANYTHING WORSE THAN LOSING EYE SIGHT?" HE REPLIED: "YES, LOSING YOUR VISION!" 
9. When YOU PRAY for OTHERS, GOD LISTEN to YOU and BLESSES THEM, and SOMETIMES, when you are SAFE and HAPPY, REMEMBER that SOMEONE has PRAYED for YOU.  
10. WORRYING does NOT TAKE AWAY TOMORROW'S TROUBLES; IT TAKES AWAY today's PEACE.  

What Do You Do When Somebody Pushes You?

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. -- Nelson Mandela

The Way of Aikido: Life Lessons from an American Sensei

--by George Leonard, Nov 08, 2016

The following is an excerpt from 'The Way of Aikido: LifeLessons from an American Sensei' by George Leonard.

 "What do you do when somebody pushes you?”

"Over the past twenty-five years, I've posed this question to groups totaling more than fifty thousand people in workshop sessions, and the first answer in every case has been 'Push back.' I've heard 'Push back,' as a matter of fact, in four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. From this experience, I've concluded that the practice of pushing back whenever pushed is ubiquitous in Western culture — and, I suspect, in other cultures as well.

"And here, of course, we're not just talking about a physical push. It's unlikely you'll be pushed physically between now and this time next week. But the odds are pretty good that someone will push you verbally or psychologically. And if you're like most people, you're quite likely to push back verbally or psychologically. So let's see what options you have, what outcomes you can expect, in case you do. It's simple: You can win, you can lose, or there can be a stalemate — none of which is conductive to harmony and mutual satisfaction. If you win, somebody else has to lose. If you lose, it doesn't feel very good. And a stalemate's a big waste of time.

"It could be said that the health of an individual or an organization is generally directly proportionate to the number of perceived options at its command. The converse is also true. When an individual or an organization moves toward breakdown, that move is generally accompanied by the perception of fewer and fewer options. Isn't it strange, then, that when we're being pushed, we've limited ourselves to a response that results in only three options, none of them particularly good?

"What's the alternative? To deal with any kind of push, whether a shove or strike or kick, the aikidoist generally moves toward the attacker and slightly off the line of attack, simultaneously making a turning maneuver that leaves him or her next to the attacker and facing in the same direction. In this position, the aikidoist is looking at the situation from the attacker's viewpoint. It's important here to add one more phrase to that statement. The aikidoist is looking at the situation from the attacker's viewpoint without giving up his or her own viewpoint.

"This entering and blending maneuver immediately multiplies your options. Thousands of techniques and variations have been identified in aikido, all of which become possible once you've blended. The same thing is true when you blend verbally, when instead of meeting a verbal attack with a verbal counterattack you respond first by coming around to your attacker's point of view, seeing the situation from his or her viewpoint. This response, whether physical or verbal, is quite disarming, leaving the attacker with no target to focus on. At that point, numerous options present themselves, including, best of all, the clear possibility of a reconciliation that meets the needs of both parties.

"This isn't to say that we should always blend. In some cases, pushing back, standing your ground, and striking out forcefully is necessary or appropriate. It would have been difficult, probably impossible, to blend with Hitler. Diplomats of the 1930s tried and failed. But we could also say that, in trying to appease the dictator, the Western democracies failed to maintain their own points of view, which is essential to the successful practice of this option. In any case, blending isn't the answer for every situation; it's a means by which you can multiply your options in responding to any kind of attack.

"Then, too, it's possible to strike effectively after blending. In physical aikido, as a matter of fact, a successful blend almost always creates an opening for a throw or a pin.

"Yes, sometimes I fail to blend when I should have blended, and I'm almost always sorry for it. Radio talk shows offer a marvelous opportunity to practice this skill and sometimes, just as a reminder, I write the word BLEND in large letters on a card placed near the microphone. Again and again blending and other skills learned in aikido have produced outcomes that would seem unlikely if not miraculous, as we'll see later. For now, let me sum up with a few guidelines on the art of blending.

"Blend from a grounded and centered stance. Whether the attack is physical or verbal, it's important that you be firmly connected to the earth with your energy concentrated in your 'center,' or hara (the Japanese word for belly), as you blend. It's difficult to blend with your energy concentrated in your head, shoulders, or chest. Since energy follows attention, put your attention on the soles of your feet and on a point an inch or two below your navel. You might touch this point as a reminder. If you receive a verbal attack while seated, put your attention on your buttocks and the small of your back as well as on the soles of your feet. Sink into your chair. Feel the small of your back on the backrest. Let your shoulders remain relaxed and supple and make sure your breath doesn't rise into your upper chest. Let your breath expand your hara, and if the attack is verbal, speak slowly and with genuine feeling as you respond.

"Don't overblend. Responding to a verbal attack by saying something on the order of 'Yes, you're right and I'm wrong and I'm a bad person,' isn't blending. By saying anything along the lines of 'I'm a bad person,' you bring the attention back to yourself rather than truly looking at the situation from your attacker's viewpoint. Stay grounded and centered. Honor your viewpoint while seeing the situation from your attacker's viewpoint. Sometimes a blend involves an apology, but blending isn't just giving in or denigrating yourself. It's seeking harmony through a reconciliation that honors both viewpoints.

"Avoid the overuse of blending with your mate, family, and close friends.Blending is extremely powerful. Using it all the time can drive people close to you crazy. There are times when people want to and need to grapple with one another verbally, to have an old-fashioned give-and-take. Again, let me stress that blending is a valuable and often surprisingly effective option, but it isn't the only way to deal with incoming energy.

"If you're going to blend, do it wholeheartedly. The inadequacy of a less-than-wholehearted physical blend is dramatically revealed in aikido. When an aikidoist makes a halfhearted attempt at blending while hurrying to pull off a technique, the technique is almost sure to fail. The same thing is true in verbal blending. The blend isn't just a trick with which to fool and adversary. It involves true understanding of the other person's intentions and feelings. Ideally, a verbal blend conveys this understanding. It involves empathy. It comes from the heart.

"Practice! Blending is one of those rare skills that sometimes produces immediate good results. But to blend consistently and to do so under pressure requires a great deal of practice. Start simply by listening carefully and sympathetically to everything people say to you. (Remember, this doesn't necessarily mean agreeing.) When you get really good at this, you might be surprised at how successfully you can blend under pressure. After attending one of my weekend workshops that stressed blending, a leading San Francisco public advocacy lawyer was opposed by eleven corporate lawyers in a meeting wth a judge in chambers. 'I decided to see if this stuff works,' he told me later. 'I blended with everything they said for an hour, after which they conceded to my point.'

"Realize that harmony can spring from the meeting of opposites. To blend is to move toward the attack, creating a dance that joins attacker and defender and opens the way to reconciliation. It yields reliable good results, but it really isn't about winning. Blending is an expression of love, of a willingness to embrace even the strongest attack and bring it into a circle of concord that somehow connects each individual to the essential unity and harmony of the universe."

---

Excerpted from 'The Way of Aikido: Life Lessons from an American Sensei' by George Leonard.

Be The Change: When you're in a discussion today, make an effort to see the other person's point of view and let them know you are trying to understand them.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

We build too many walls and not enough bridges. -- Sir Isaac Newton

Why We Shut People Out and What To Do Instead

--by Robert Waldinger, syndicated from ideas.ted.com, Oct 20, 2016

Remember the thrill of building walls as a kid? Forts made from snow, or a giant cardboard box. Burying ourselves in blankets and pillows. Walling ourselves off from our enemies — real or imagined — to fight heroic battles until it was time for dinner.

Even as adults, we swear undying loyalty to our local sports teams and hate their rivals. While the athletes themselves flit from one team to another in search of bigger contracts, we’re sure our home team is special. We’re passionate, sometimes to the point of violence, even though we know it’s only a game.

We make artificial divisions everywhere: Democrats and Republicans, black and white, millennials and baby boomers. Even those of us who are against building walls find ourselves pointing accusing fingers at those wall-builders.

Being human means there’s a wall-builder in each of us. Our minds naturally divide the world into me and not-me, us and them. For thousands of years, our sages have taught that we’re all one, yet we still divide wherever we look.

Why are we this way, what are the costs of being like this — and what, if anything, can we do about it?

Why are we this way?

We evolved this way. Sebastian Junger points out that we evolved as a species to survive in harsh environments. For thousands of years, our ability to band together against a common enemy (weather, wild beasts, other tribes) was life-saving. Those who were most inclined to join forces were more likely to survive and pass along their genes. Facing a common danger makes us feel close and cooperative. In fact, it can be so exhilarating that many soldiers actually miss combat when they come home.

Knowing who we are makes us feel secure. As we grow up, we’re constantly defining ourselves. In my case: Caucasian, male, born in Iowa, live in Boston, Zen Buddhist, good at learning languages. With countless labels, I build up this creation I call my self. Psychologist Erik Erikson wrote, “there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.” It’s easy to ignore things I don’t like about myself and even easier to locate those qualities in others. (“I’m fine, but those people over there are the ones who are weak/lazy/ignorant.”)

(False) certainty about others is reassuring. Putting labels on entire groups of people makes things much simpler. If all New Yorkers are pushy, or all politicians are dishonest, we don’t have to do the hard work of figuring out who’s who. George Orwell, whose book 1984 depicts this with terrifying accuracy, defined nationalism as “the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad.”‘

 

What are the costs of walling ourselves off?

Once we slap a label on others, we don’t bother to look more closely, and our fears grow. With social mixers like the military draft long disappeared, and news media like Fox and MSNBC growing ever more partisan, it’s easy to restrict ourselves — without even realizing it — to people like us and to views we agree with. The result is that we’re mystified by the beliefs of those on the other side of social and economic divides: “those Trump supporters”; “those Hillary supporters”; “those Brexit voters.” Our fears about others increase, with no chance to see how much of our basic humanness we share.

We are actually less safe. Labeling entire groups of people as good guys or bad guys is dangerous, because we end up accidentally putting white hats on bad guys and black hats on good guys. If all Muslims are terrorists, we don’t pay attention to exactly who it is who’s heading toward extremism — whether Muslim, Christian, vegan, or carnivore. And calling millions of people terrorists pushes them away just when we need them most.

We waste precious resources. Trying to wall ourselves off from entire groups of people is exhausting and inefficient. We’ve spent a trillion dollars protecting the United States since 9/11, and Steven Brill notes that we are arguably no safer than we were 15 years ago.

 

Help! What can we do about this?

Embrace our inner wall-builder. The more we know about our own impulses to find enemies, the sooner we’ll recognize it when people are trying to manipulate us for their selfish ends.

Give our wall-builder a place to play. Whether it’s barricading ourselves off in snow forts or rooting for the Red Sox, we can channel the urge to find heroes and enemies into healthy competition.

Choose our real-life villains wisely. We can target bad actors and real social problems, instead of indulging in the dangerous temptation to paint whole groups of people with the same tarring brush. This means targeting terrorists, not Muslims. Poverty, not poor people. Brutality and racism, not police officers.

Find ways to know the people who seem alien. This may be the hardest task. Immediately following the Brexit vote, Oxford professor Alexander Betts gave a talk in which he showed a map of Britain highlighting all the counties that voted in favor of leaving the European Union. He realized he’d spent less than four days of his life in any of the top 50 of those counties, pointing out how little he knew about the people who were on the other side of a growing social and economic chasm. Robert Putnam writes about a similar class divide in America.

Perhaps we need something like the great social mixer we experienced during WWII — not war, but a kind of universal national service where young women and men from all corners of society work together to fight real common enemies like homelessness, poverty, illiteracy — and in the process get to know the best of our shared humanness.

There is tremendous energy behind our dissatisfaction and desire for change. Energy we can harness in ways that either make us feel more isolated and afraid, or make us feel more connected and engaged. We have the freedom to choose. And our choices could not matter more.

---

Syndicated from ideas.ted.com. Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Zen priest. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies of adult life ever done.

Be The Change: As you meet with friends or strangers today, note any tendency in yourself to create a barrier. Embrace your inner wall-builder, then find a way to get to know them better.

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.  -- Carl Jung

How to Talk to Strangers

--by Kio Stark, syndicated from ideas.ted.com, Oct 15, 2016

Kio Stark has always talked to strangers — she believes these fleeting moments give us new ways to fall in love with the world. She shares five ways to spark a meaningful interaction with someone you’ve never met before.

What does it take to say a simple hello to a stranger you pass on the street? How might that interaction continue? What are the places in which you are more likely to interact with people you don’t know? How do you get out of a conversation? These sound like easy questions. They are not.

Each of the following expeditions provides a structure and a contrivance to help you explore the world of people you don’t know. Each gives you a method or a reason for talking to a stranger, a mechanical problem to solve.

You can do them alone or with a partner. In pairs, you each go on separate expeditions and report back. Take notes with your mind as you go along, and write them down when you get back. Share your notes, on your blog, your social networks, anywhere you write about your experiences. You can enlighten your friends and readers with your observations. Documenting experiences is a special way of processing them for yourself. You can do them all in one day or spaced out over months. You might enjoy one of them and do it over and over. You might try this and find it’s not for you. Anything is possible.

The guiding principle of these expeditions is respect for others, and every explorer should pay careful attention to their own conduct. If you are male or have a male appearance, be especially respectful when speaking to women and people who have a female appearance, since by default you could be seen as threatening or intrusive. Be polite, keep a bit of extra physical distance, and if people aren’t giving you signals that they’re open to interaction, don’t push it.

Remember the tremendous cultural differences in expectations of eye contact and street behavior. Remember that context matters. These expeditions may not all make sense in the place where you are. So for these same reasons, I recommend against doing them in cultures you’re not steeped in or native to (apart from the last one; see below).

The expeditions are presented in order of increasing challenge — increased complexity, increased emotional risk, increased potential for depth of interaction. The first expedition is a warm-up to help you slow down your pace and sharpen your awareness, hone your skills at observing public behavior, and get you in the right frame of mind. I highly recommend you do this once no matter which other expeditions you might choose.

1. Watch and learn

You’ll need a notebook for this. Spend one hour in a public place where you are not likely to encounter people you know. Try a park, a café, or a public plaza, a tourist destination, a bus or train. Anywhere you can linger and watch people who are not moving rapidly is perfect. Choose a good place to sit so you’ll be able to see a variety of people at a relatively close distance. Sit still. Turn off your devices; get off the grid. I really mean OFF. It’s only an hour — you can do it! Part of the challenge here is full presence.

Start looking around you. First, describe the setting. Where are you? What are the most interesting features of the place? What is it for? What do people do there that it isn’t designed for? What kinds of people are there? Take notes on what they look like, how they are dressed, what they do and don’t do, how they interact with one another. If there is a big crowd, you can focus on just a few people if you want. If you are inspired to invent backstories for any of them, make sure to specify the details about them that inform your narrative. So, for example, if you conclude that someone is confident or rich, homeless or shy, a tourist or lives in the neighborhood, what told you that? Their posture, their skin, their clothing? Slow down your mind and understand where your assumptions come from.

2. Say hello

Take a walk in a populous place like a park with paths or along a city sidewalk. Define a territory for yourself: Are you going to walk around the block? From the oak tree to the far bench? Give yourself a reasonable territory to traverse, something that will take at least five to ten minutes. Choose a place that has a reasonable density of pedestrians but not a packed pathway. Walk slowly. Your mission is to say hello to every person you pass by. All of them. Try to look them in the eye, but don’t worry if they don’t hear you or ignore you. You’re just getting warmed up. Now try it again and mix in phatic observations — the kind that mean little overtly but speak of social acknowledgment — in place of greetings, things like “Cute dog,” “I like your hat,” or “Cold out today!” These acts of noticing pierce the veil of anonymity and create momentary social space.

Keep a keen awareness of the dynamics of each of these micro-interactions. You’re behaving a little strangely in public, so pay attention to how people respond. You might make a few people uncomfortable, but since you’re doing it with everyone and you’re not stopping, the discomfort should be minimal. So what’s happening when you greet people? Do they smile? Do they laugh? Are they startled? Do they seem uneasy? Do they talk to their companions about what’s happening? If you’re nervous about your comfort, you can take a friend along. The friend doesn’t have to say anything to anyone; they’re just there to make you feel safe.

3.  Get lost

This expedition is a sequence of requests that get successively more involved as you progress — if you are able to — through each stage. Have some paper and a pen handy and keep your smartphone tucked away. The first step is to ask someone for directions. If they stop and give you directions, you ask them to draw you a map. If they draw you the map, you ask for their phone number so you can call if you get lost. If they give you their phone number, you call it. A surprising number of people give out their phone number. Over the years that I used this exercise in my classes, only one student ever actually made the call. “I was surprised by how terrifying that last step was,” she told me. “How much space we give one another in this crowded city.” I encourage you to be brave here.

Take care in choosing a starting place and destination — you may have to try this a few times to find a pair that works well. It can’t be too simple to get to, or the map won’t seem necessary. But it shouldn’t be so complicated that it’s too hard to explain. I created this exercise almost a decade ago, and it’s been made a little harder to pull off with the ubiquity of smartphones. You need to appear plausibly unable to navigate without a handdrawn map or list of directions. Taking the time to draw or write directions is a slight incursion, and this exercise is about incrementally escalating incursions.

This expedition also requires you to lie. Pay attention to how that feels.

4. Ask a question

People talk if you give them the chance to. They talk when you listen. This expedition calls for asking a stranger a disarmingly intimate question and then simply listening to what they say. By “disarmingly intimate” I mean a question that’s unexpectedly real and personal. It’s a question that goes to the center of a person’s self. It should also be a question that doesn’t require an act of remembering. You want something that people can tap into in an immediate, visceral way. My favorite is “What are you afraid of?” A few people say things like spiders and mice and avoid the emotional invitation, but the majority of people go straight to their hearts and tell you about their fears of death, failure, loneliness and loss — and the things they say are amazing to hear, amazing to have them shared with you. You can come up with your own questions too, and try out more than one.

The structure works like this. It relies on using video or audio recording equipment (you can use your smartphone) to help legitimate the intrusion and give it some logic. The camera is both a contrivance to permit the question and a little bit of mediation that allows people to open up. You approach someone who is not in a hurry and ask them if you can ask them a question on camera. Some people may be willing to answer you but not on camera — that’s fine! The point is the conversation, not the recording. Start recording before you pose your question. Then be quiet. If they ask you to clarify, go ahead, but don’t give them any examples of answers. Your job is to listen. If the person seems comfortable talking, you can ask follow-up questions, but don’t be too hasty. Give people a chance to fill their own silences. That’s often when the magic really happens.

5. Don’t belong

This final expedition takes you into deeper, more complex territory. It’s the most emotionally risky. Choose a place you don’t fit in, where you are in the minority in some way. If you are someone who spends the majority of your time in the minority, this experience may be as common as rain to you, and you may want to skip it. You should be noticeably out of place — perhaps by race, gender, ethnicity, age, ability, membership, appearance or other categories of difference. The goal here is simply to observe: What are people doing? How are they responding to your presence? You can try engaging and see how that goes. Be aware, be observant, see if you can understand the micro-local assumptions about public behavior and cleave to them.

Obviously, don’t put yourself in any danger, don’t choose a place where you’d expect to be met with aggression. You may have a wonderful, eye-opening experience. But also prepare yourself: It’s possible you’ll feel really awful after this expedition. If that happens, you’ll have experienced something essential to empathy: what it feels like to be treated as invisible or unwelcome. I do not wish these things for you, but if you feel them, I hope they will change the way you see the world.

This text was excerpted from When Strangers Meet by Kio Stark, published by TED Books/Simon & Schuster.

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Kio Stark writes, teaches and speaks about stranger interactions, independent learning and how people relate to technology. She is the author of the TED Book, "When Strangers Meet." You can watch her TED talk Why You Should Talk to Strangers here.

Be The Change: Today, start a conversation with someone whom you might have ignored or brushed past before. For more on this subject, watch Kio Stark's TED talk.

http://wc4.net/t?ctl=7F13:684ED19FF2D88FA6ED415C3BF85CA0D2&

Sourced From www.dailygood.org

Khoobsurti ...

🌹: खू्बसूरती :🌹

हर किसी को अपनी खूबसूरती पर घमण्ड होता है | मै आज आपको खूबसूरती की परिभाषा बताता हूँ

🌹खूबसूरत है..... ....वो लब जिन पर, दूसरों के लिए कोई दुआ आ जाए !!

🌹खूबसूरत है ............वो दिल जो ,  किसी के दुख मे शामिल हो जाए !!

🌹खूबसूरत है.......... वो जज़बात जो, दूसरो की भावनाओं को समझ जाए !!

🌹खूबसूरत है........ वो एहसास जिस मे, प्यार की मिठास हो जाए !!

🌹खूबसूरत है............. वो बातें जिनमे, शामिल हों दोस्ती और प्यार की किस्से कहानियाँ !!

🌹खूबसूरत है.......... वो आँखे जिनमे, किसी के खूबसूरत ख्वाब समा जाए !!

🌹खूबसूरत है .........वो हाथ जो किसी के लिए .मुश्किल के वक्त सहारा बन जाए !!

🌹खूबसूरत है..........वो सोच जिस मैं, किसी कि सारी...... ख़ुशी छुप जाए !

🌹खूबसूरत है............. .... वो दामन जो, दुनिया से किसी के गमो को छुपा जाए !

🌹खूबसूरत है.......वो आसूँ जो, किसी और के गम मे बह जाए !!

Friendly Gestures

17 Friendly Gestures That Create Good Karma

When we create good karma in our lives today, we create more happiness and fulfilment for our futures tomorrow.

Karma is a universal law that affects everyone, all of the time.  It is the consequence of our actions.  Karma brings back to us what we are putting out into the universe, be it love, hate, humor, sadness, stress, excitement or anything else we chose to project.

Like the ripples in a pond that radiate out from a pebble dropping into the water, karma pulses out after each of our actions and choices, and it affects the future unfolding in front of us.

Offering kindness to others is a wonderful way to bring happiness to others, and it is also a way to create good karma in our own lives.  When we put kindness and love out into the world, the after-effects of these choices bring more kindness and love into tomorrow’s reality.  For this reason, offering a friendly gesture to another person is an action that is always worth the effort!

Here are a few friendly gestures that create good karma.  How many of these actions are a part of your daily routine?

1. Smile at people throughout the day.

2. Be patient with others.

3. Give a hug to someone you care about.

4. Pat someone on the back.

5. Offer a handshake.

6. Open a door for someone else.

7. Let a car in ahead of you while in traffic.

8. Use the words “please” and “thank you” habitually.

9. Share your knowledge and skills with others.

10. Be interested in what others have to say (ask questions, listen, etc).

11. Own up to any mistakes you make, and offer genuine apologies.

12. Give compliments freely.

13. Stop to ask someone “are you ok?” when they look distressed.

14. Help someone who looks lost or overwhelmed.

15. Stick up for someone who’s being made fun of or treated poorly.

16. Forgive people for their mistakes.

17. Focus on the good in others.

Which of these friendly gestures do you use the most in your day-to-day life?  Are there any other friendly gestures you would recommend for building good karma?  

Buried Treasure: The Story Of A Marriage

You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter. --Eckart Tolle

Buried Treasure: The Story of a Marriage

--by Carolyn North, syndicated from carolynnorthbooks.com, Sep 14, 2016

Last night I saw a swashbuckling production of TREASURE ISLAND, that wild tale of adventure on the high seas and mayhem on tropical islands with buried treasure, and good guys and bad guys mixing it up with every mishap in the world you could imagine.

It reminded me a bit of my marriage.

It has been a year and a half since Herb died, and all the ups and down, triumphs and tragedies of our long life together are peeling off me one by one, as I remember and let go, releasing him bit by bit as I grieve and heal from the loss of the half-century journey we took together. It feels like removing petals from a daisy, or an artichoke one by one down to the heart, where, surrounded by yet one more protective choke of thistle, lies the delicious heart that distills the taste of the whole plant.

So, I’m there and almost ready to take that last bite of the heart of the fruit.

Like most marriages, I guess, we were a mixed bag of personality differences, varied preferences, unexamined childhood traumas, weaknesses and strengths, hopes and passions. I think he and I partnered each other with as much love and courage as we could, making every mistake in the book on a daily basis but trying to learn from them and carry on. We, with our children, were a brave but merry little band most of the time, and laughter graced our dinner table nightly. (With dinner in our bellies, we were a fabulously witty bunch!) 

Though I wish I had done many things differently over the years, and known then what I know now, I have no real regrets.

However, all that is water under the bridge, as they say – washed away into past history with my tears and memories and stories – and what is left is the deeper essence that, I believe, brought us together in the first place.

I think of our marriage, now, as mythic. 

Herb, the budding scientist, serious and smart, wounded from the Holocaust in childhood and determined to succeed in his new world, and Carolyn, the mystical, impractical artist-type with a crazy Russian family and a tender heart. It was as if we had found each other across space and time, speaking different languages but determined to try understanding one another anyhow.

It is that that I contemplate now as I look back over the years at who we were and what we accomplished, and I realize it was a big piece of mutual soul work we were doing.  We were attempting to complete ourselves with one another, to find a common frame that combined the rational and the intuitive, suspecting that a true understanding of the world included both. 

We knew that we both wished for a Wholeness we could not attain on our own, and we both wished to do it with love.

Of course there were times when, frustrated down to my bones and thinking he would never get it, I was ready to pack a bag and leave. (Herb claimed he never once thought to leave.) But then I would simmer down, realizing that if he and I – two people who loved each other - couldn’t find a way of communicating what we saw without fighting over it, then how could we expect the rest of the world to do so? We were not just ‘us,’ we were also representatives of our two mindsets, with a responsibility to make this experiment work.

Slowly, over the years, we both softened our stances to make room for the other’s reality, feeling for, and finding the places where our perceptions could resonate with the other’s frame of reference.

I learned to listen closely, and shift my mind into hard ‘facts’ lined up in a logical argument, recognizing the clarity and beauty of keeping things simple, and he cautiously spread his perceptions into my more amorphous direction, writing poetry and feeling his way towards unexpected synchronicities. 

His joke was that as a scientist at the University he was considered a radical amongst his colleagues, but when he came home he was the conservative in the family. He called me a witch when magic happened around me, but learned to admire whatever it was that made magic happen; I, of course, depended upon his expertise to keep everything running, from the finances to the plumbing. 

We were a team – a damn good team with a good long run. 

But it went deeper than that – quite a bit deeper – and that is what I am contemplating now. What, I believe, we all need to be contemplating in one way or another.

It has to do with letting go of the arguments, of having to be ‘right’ about everything while making other points of view ‘wrong.’ It’s about listening for where varied wisdoms touch, even when the language is different.

 It’s about letting go of either/or thinking and finding the pathways towards both/and understandings. 

And doing so calmly, with love.

On Herb’s last night I sat with him while he slept, his breathing slowing, his face calm and inward looking. We had said everything we needed to say to each other in this life, we had maintained our friendship and humor even through the worst of his last few weeks – doing every last moment together, no matter what. 

I was beyond exhaustion, and he was ready to go.

Alone in the room with him when he breathed his last breath, I was quite surprised to hear myself exclaim out loud,

“We did it!”

And knew I was referring to all 58 years of our marriage.

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This article is reprinted with permission. Carolyn North writes about Consciousness Change, about storytelling as a kickstarter to creativity. Her forms are autobiographical stories, mythology retellings, and how-to books. Learn more at her website. 

Be The Change: Reflect on a close relationship in your life, and what treasures of wisdom and transformation are buried beneath its surface.

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